Snag looks down at his hand.
“Yuh see the Circle Dot says I’m a rustler and my dad and your uncle killed each other, and—I’ll help yuh get home safe, Miss Haley—if your men won’t fill me full of lead on my way out.”
“Have they been shooting at you?” she asks and he nods.
“Did you or your men shoot at me?”
“I came alone—and I didn’t shoot at you.”
“I thought it was your men,” says she. “I—I—that horse ran away with me and brought me up here. I was afraid to get off but after a while it stopped and I got off, and—and I didn’t have any bridle and I couldn’t catch it again.
“It got dark and I climbed up on top of the cliff and in the night I saw two men on horses ride past. I was afraid to call to them, but as I followed them—or rather went the way they did and heard them talking—I almost ran into them. There’s a cave up there, and they were talking something about somebody getting suspicious and about cow-tracks, and one of them said the best thing they could do was to either bluff it out or fight it out.
“I heard my name mentioned and Mr. Hartley’s, and—and I thought it was some of your men, and then one of them said: ‘Let’s bunch it. Nobody will ever know where we went, and they’ll never find this place in a thousand years.’”
“A cave?” asks Snag. “Up here?”
“Yes. It’s big enough to ride a horse into. One of the men said: ‘This sure has been easy pickings for us, but I made a big mistake when I missed that Hashknife person. He’s got too much sabe.’ And then the other one said: ‘Yes, you went too strong, I guess, and didn’t shoot straight enough.’